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from the a-freetard-american-in-taiwan dept

So, here we are again at week's end, and there are more posts to review.

I was slightly surprised when asked to write the reviews, since I tend to be more “freetard” than anything. Not by choice, unless you call my choice to live in a country other than the US a choice. Instead, as some may know, I am an American living in Taiwan, and because of the banking rules here, online purchases and international purchases are not an option for me. Of course, this also means that I have some personal perspective when Taiwan makes fun of your current politics. That is when you know you've hit the bottom.

What does this mean? I must often times turn to illegal downloads of pirated materials for my entertainment, or suffer from endless bad shows in Chinese and very few options.

In the digital age though, this makes no sense. It is not as if you have to ship the package to Taiwan. It's a digital good, and I can just go to www.yourproductdownload.com. After all, even though I cannot use my card online here, I still have other means of ordering online and paying for it. So, what is the content industries excuse? Guess this shows more examples of how the content industry is hurting themselves.

I read this blog to keep up with the changes occurring in our world, as well as other blogs, because my job is part of the technical community, so impacts on that community impact me. However, as an international, I have also found the US government’s approach to the rest of the world more than slightly disturbing.

They choose to try to enact a world changing law, SOPA/PIPA, and exert their authority over the internet, when they are not the world government and have no right to do so. We see more and more that the US government is trying to find ways to detain foreign citizens, based on US laws. How does this make sense? Why am I paying taxes (And yes, I file taxes every year), to pay my government to go muck up other peoples countries? Maybe they should worry about fixing the problems at home first?

What is even worse is that these industries are making money, and have been shown how technology helps them over and over and over again.

On top of this, they fail to see how it can be abused, even though we already have an example here,here, and here. These are not just hypotheticals (well, the first is, but that is because it is the most outrageous); they happened. Want that company to shut down the consumer reviews because someone told you about bad service? How will you separate the good from the bad?

Sorry Timothy, I know this doesn't fit the story, but wanted to let you know I added your books to Goodreads.https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3292479.Timothy_GeignerSince you are a writer, I was thinking to suggest you to join Goodreads. it is a good site, and I believe owned by Amazon, so could help get you more exposure.

"Or, if you're lazy, just read everything I write and take it as gospel. Because it is."

So Timothy, when do we get a copy of the full gospel? I am waiting to read it, and am wondering how you will make the begat parts funny. And no, no sarcastic troll face. I think you could make it funny.

Please feel free to show where he states he hates copyright. IIRC, he has even stated that copyright should exist, contrary to those like me who thinks it creates ultimately more problems because of abuses than it help.

The most I have seen is Mike discussing his dislike of copyright abuse, not copyright enforcement.

Personally, I will not go back to the US, and will stay in Taiwan, until the government gets its collective head out of its ass and starts enforcing the original "for the public good" copyright viewpoint, instead of allowing the **AA's to push their abusive views on the general public.

Actually, it has nothing to do with having the money or not. I guess you have never worked here. I cannot use my debit card online or overseas because of bank restrictions for foreigner accounts. I also have been unable to get a credit card because the process is convoluted and me and my wife have been unable to make it to the bank together to apply for it, especially since unlike me, she has no vacation time. So you are completely wrong in your assumptions. I can afford it, but have no way to give the money.

Sadly, I am one of the ones who paid nothing. Not by choice, but because I lack the ability to pay. If Tim ever comes to Taiwan, I will gladly give him the money for the books though (Or if he can figure out how to let us pay at 7-11).

There are more and more and more stories about people getting negative reactions by identifying security holes than getting good reactions from companies who wish to fix them instead of burying their collective heads in the sand. Sad but true, I would not tell them either.

I actually just tried doing a conversion of Mike's book "Approaching Infinity" to epub and Tim's book "Digilife" into mobi, and what I see is the following:

Mike's book had a few conversion issues. I notice that letters dropped off of a few of the words, and since, unless you change how it converts, it uses the first page as the book cover by converting it to an image file, it caused the book title to display oddly.

Tim's book I found almost no issues aside from one.

Both books will also convert the page numbers listed in the PDFs to numbers in the book in their relative position.
Since the page numbers display at the bottom of the page, this means you will see it in the middle of paragraphs or the end of words.

An example is in Tim's Digilife, if you go from page 2 to 3, you should get:
“Hey!” she shouted.
“Oh come on. I just turned it on so it’ll be ready.”

Instead what you see is:
“Hey!” she shouted.
2
“Oh come on. I just turned it on so it’ll be ready.”

Another example is:
Should see:
“I’m not sure.” He felt lightheaded, unable to think clearly, though that was probably just the heat. He looked in every direction. There was very little else out here. If anyone needed an aggressive advertising technique, it would be this place.

What you actually see:
“I’m not sure.” He felt lightheaded, unable to think clearly, though that was probably just the heat. He looked in every direction. There was very little else out here. If anyone needed an aggressive advertising 3
technique, it would be this place.

Keep in mind, this was converted without modifying any of the standard settings, so it was formatted by the default. You can have the page numbers removed (Or better, if you can recreate the original PDF without page numbers, it will not matter), but you will probably need to review how to do text replacement and some other advanced techniques to create the exact look and feel of the end book you want.

Just remember when you try, you have the easy to use, convert as Calibre dictates, or you can get into the custom setting to help alter look and feel. It has some pretty advanced features, but you may need to play with it to find an optimal setting. I use it primarily to take the different formats and convert to mobi for kindle reading, since mobi allows you to alter font, while PDF does not on kindle (Or am I thinking .doc?).

Of course, if you have not yet published, it won't matter since it seems you have an authoring tool to export to proper format, but I was mentioning this mostly for already published, non DRM books.

As for AC's comment, Calibre is not actually that bulky, and has been able to read pretty much any format I have thrown at it as of now. If you are trying with DRM though, that is a different issue. It is also free for us freetards out there.